He brushed that petty business aside. “Have you thought about what you’ll do when I leave?”
“I’ll miss you.”
“Nice.” And no word about Dante. “But what will you do for money? You do remember things like heat and lights and food, don’t you, while planning your cozy rustic winter?”
“Of course I remember, down to the penny. I bought an electric heater to fill in for the fireplace, and I’ve been putting most of my salary in the bank. What I’ve saved on dinners alone by going out with you every night can get me through ’til January, I figure.”
“And then?”
She aligned the book just so, in its box. “I don’t know.”
“You’re not counting on Dante, are you?”
She dropped the box again. “Of course not. Everyone knows his mind is made up. He’ll never get married again.”
“Until he finds the woman to change his mind for him.”
Louisa kicked at the empty box, sending Mr. Bradford’s life to the four corners of the office in her frustration. “I am not planning my life around anyone else’s. Not yours. Not his. So there. If I run out of money, so be it. Something will turn up.”
Something did.
Howard.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
“Go on, get out of here,” Mr. Bradford told her. “I can think better without you looking over my shoulder.”
Louisa checked the appointments book. “Are you sure? We are supposed to have dinner with the Baldwins tonight.”
“I’m tired of them, and tired of eating out.”
“Do you want me to get something from the deli?”
“Marta can scramble me some eggs. Go on. And don’t come back tomorrow. I need a day off from this crud.”
Louisa put the manuscript back on the corner of his desk. “Are you angry with me?”
Mr. Bradford took his glasses off and leaned back against his chair. “No, I am angry with myself. I’m just tired, Louisa. Go. Walk on the beach, weed your garden. Sit and read a book. I’ll see you on Friday.”
Louisa looked at him closely, checking for signs of illness. “Do you feel all right, though?”
“Yes, little mother, I am fine. I’ll go to sleep early to night and stay in bed late tomorrow. We’ve been trotting too hard, that’s all. Sometimes I forget I’m not a young man anymore.”
“You’re not old, either,” she said loyally.
He was too old for her. “Go.”
Louisa went, and made a list on her way home of all the chores she could accomplish with so much free time. The lawn, the attic, the little bedroom—or a book on the beach. Champ voted for the beach. He’d been working hard too, practicing his new training lessons, guarding the bird feeder from prowling cats, keeping the house free of moths.
They went to the beach.
The next morning Louisa woke up early full of ambition. After she brushed her teeth the bathroom floor was full of water. So much for her lists.
They went to the hardware store.
Anyone could change a washer. That’s what the book said. The high school kid with the bad complexion working at the hardware store for the summer said she had to know the size. Louisa had thrown him off the computer at the library for trying to locate chat rooms and porn sites, so he was not liable to be really helpful. In fact, he looked downright happy to tell her that old sinks were never standard, and they mightn’t even carry the size she needed, once she got her sink apart.
Well, if she had to drive to the next town, so be it. She was going to fix the leaking sink, come hell or the already high water. She could do it. She had a book.
She turned the water off under the sink, with pride in her prescience. Then she tried to unscrew the hot water handle. The faucet was so corroded she couldn’t find the screwdriver slot, so she tried the cold water. After a pitched battle, with her climbing into the sink for leverage, she won, but still had to get the washer off. The screwdriver or the pliers? Louisa found an old tweezers, almost as rusted as the washer. Aha! She was as inventive as she was wise.
When she’d gathered the crumpled pieces onto a paper towel, she realized she couldn’t take that to the hardware store. She went back to her book, discovered that there was a special tool just for lifting sink washers, which the pimply, porn-chasing kid at the counter might have told her. Too bad it was her friend Bill’s day off.
Leaving the hot water faucet dripping with WD40, hoping to loosen the screw, she went back to the store. New tool at hand, she returned to the attack. The faucet broke. The new tool worked, though, pulling the washer out of the debris. Now she had a washer for size, and no fixture to put it in.
The book didn’t say anything about how to change a whole unit. She went back to the twerp with the tools. He was waiting for her, grinning.
“I decided I’d like a shiny new fixture instead of that ratty old one. What are my choices?”
“We got three plumbers in town. Which phone number do you want?”
“I want—”
“Need help?”
Louisa knew that voice, and the shiver it caused down her back and down to her toes. Dante was holding an orange extension cord. He was wearing old jeans, low on his hips, and a red tucked-in T-shirt with Paumonok Harbor written on it. He looked like a Christmas present to Louisa. Before she could deny she was desperate—for anything he might be offering—the kid announced that she’d turned a crummy washer into a catastrophe.
Dante nodded. “Old houses are hell. You start with something simple and find a week’s work underneath. I’ll come look at it, all right?”
“Now?”
“You can’t use it before I get there, right?”
Did she have dirt on her face that needed washing? She stopped herself from scrubbing at her cheeks, and from sticking her tongue out at the hardware half-wit. She smiled sweetly at Dante and said that would be lovely, she’d meet him at her house.
She raced home, then rushed to change her grungy plumbing clothes, comb her hair, and wash up at the kitchen sink. Then she remembered: he’d be working in her bathroom. She tore up the stairs with a plastic bag and swept her makeup and moisturizers and night masks into it. She crammed the bag into the vanity—where he’d be turning the water back on once he’d fixed the faucets. She grabbed the bag and tossed her tampons, panty liners and anti-yeast infection ingredients into it, then shoved that, seams splitting and all, under her bed.
She made it down the stairs, only breathing slightly heavier than normal, in time to hold the door while he carried in a heavy toolbox. Well, she breathed heavily whenever he was around, so maybe he’d think that was normal. Or that she was an asthmatic.
“Are you sure you can fix this?” she asked when he frowned at the chaos she’d wrought at the washbasin.
“It’s not rocket science.” He put his tools on the closed toilet seat and opened the lid. With that equipment, he could most likely fix a rocket, too, Louisa thought.
“Water off?”
Her chest swelled. She wasn’t a total incompetent. She pointed to the vanity, where nothing remained but neat stacks of toilet paper and towels. Then her dog trotted into the tiny bathroom, with one of those plastic disposable douche bottles he’d retrieved from under the bed. Gentleman that he was, Dante pretended not to see her blush, or beat the dog over the head until he dropped his new toy. She slammed shut the bedroom door, the dog on the outside of it, and came back, standing as far from Dante as the narrow space per mitted.
“Is the water off at the source?”
She looked blankly at him.
“At the main. You know, where the water comes into the house? Old pipes can snap when you work on them, and you don’t want a worse mess.”
The water main was in the crawl space under the kitchen, along with the oil tank and the hot water heater. Louisa knew because she’d watched old man Redstone turn the water on when she arrived. The half cellar was down rickety dark steps, and was full of cobwebs, mouse droppings, and e
ven an empty snake skin. “Oh, I’m sure the shutoff up here is enough.”
Dante took his flashlight and went. He came back grimy, which Louisa thought never looked so good before, and got to work.
He grunted and grumbled, wiped her WD40 on his pants and her guest towel, the one with pansies on it, from a yard sale, of course. He got dirtier and sweatier, in the little bathroom with its one tiny window, trying to free the old fixture that must have been here since the ’38 hurricane. He had a streak of grease down one cheek and torn knuckles on one hand. She clapped when he finally pulled the base off, making it all worthwhile.
“I’ll go into town for a new one, all right?”
Louisa really didn’t want to face the acned airhead at the hardware store for the fourth time that morning. She also did not want to admit she had no idea what to buy. “Sure, just put everything on my account. I’ll make us some lunch in the meantime. Tuna fish okay?” Lunch was the least she could do, and sandwiches were the most, considering her nonexistent culinary skills. Not even she could mess up tuna fish.
Dante smiled. “My favorite.” It wasn’t, but so what?
While he was gone Louisa got to work. She set the kitchen table with a dark blue tablecloth, two white dishes with blue fish on them, cloth napkins with little lighthouses, and glasses with seashells, all from her Saturday morning bargain hunting. Everyone on the East End had nautical stuff to get rid of, it seemed. Then she went to her garden and came back with a bouquet to put in the blue pottery vase, leaving one daisy to droop over the almost unnoticeable chip. She was busy admiring her lovely table setting when she remembered she needed food, too.
She had just about decided how much mayonnaise to add and was debating onions, when she heard a car pull up in front of the house. Dante’s truck was a lot louder, and he could not be back yet anyway, so she went to look.
A silver-gray two-seater Jag was parked on the grass verge, where Dante’s truck had just been. The idea of these two vehicles occupying the same space, much less the same street, was ludicrous. One was worth a small fortune, one was not worth driving to the junkyard. On the other hand, you couldn’t take the Jag to the beach. You most likely couldn’t take it anywhere, worried that it would get stolen or scratched. You certainly couldn’t do a week’s worth of grocery shopping, not with your dog in the sports car. In fact, the Jag looked like it belonged in East Hampton, where the celebrity watchers could wonder at its owner, way more than in little Paumonok Harbor. Here the star was the guy who caught the biggest striped bass.
Louisa figured someone had finally bought the Mahoneys’ place—maybe mistaking the location for something south of the highway and suitably snobbish—and had parked on her side, where the grass was mowed. With that car, they’d be looking to tear down the old cottage and build a modern mansion that wouldn’t fit the neighborhood, only their self-image. They wouldn’t care, not with a car that screamed “Look at Me.”
Already despising her snooty new neighbors, Louisa stood in her front doorway, waiting to see what kind of pompous prig got out of the car. The driver opened his door.
He was more unwelcome than a fatuous fame-seeker, more despicable than a destroyer of neighborhoods, more loathsome than a luxury-flaunting loser.
He was a miserable, mean-spirited, mud-crawling maggot. In a silver-gray, open-neck Polo shirt, to match his silver-gray, ostentatious car, complete with teeny tiny polo player to match his teeny tiny heart.
“Hello, Howard.”
Chapter Thirty
He walked up to her, but stopped before he reached the porch, taking stock. “The old house looks a lot better than I remember.”
“I’ve been working hard, fixing it.”
“And there’s no need to ask how you are. You are looking delightful, as always, only more so.”
He wasn’t. His sandy hair seemed thinner than Louisa recalled, and his waist appeared thicker. He should have left his shirt untucked and worn a hat. He should have worn sunscreen, too, for his nose was unbecomingly red. He must have believed the UV rays wouldn’t dare bother him—and that his head-to-toe scrutiny wouldn’t bother Louisa. It did. “I have been working on the plumbing. What are you doing here?”
He did not stop staring. “Whatever you are doing certainly agrees with you. I like your new hairdo.”
That was odd. Louisa remembered him always insisting she keep her impossibly straight hair long, no matter how difficult it was to manage, or how much time she had to devote to it, like an unruly pet. “It’s easier short. What are you doing here?”
“I was in the neighborhood.”
Not even the neighbors were in the neighborhood. The Mahoneys never came, and Dante’s renters on the other side were only for July. “You were here, in Paumonok Harbor?”
“Close enough to visit.”
He’d never wanted to visit it before. He’d always referred to the village as Poor Man’s Harbor. It was too quiet, too empty, too far off the beaten path for him. The house was too crowded the times they’d stayed with her sister and her husband, and he was appalled to be sharing the bathroom with them. A few years ago, when he and Louisa had driven out on their own, he’d been bored the entire three-day weekend. The restaurants were not up to his standards, the tennis courts were full of children and the driving range was full of senior citizens. He did not want to swim, fish, or walk on the beach. And the TV reception stank, since they weren’t hooked up to cable then. Too primitive, he’d declared, refusing to go again. Mostly, Paumonok Harbor was too unfashionable.
People used to say that someone was from the wrong side of the tracks. In the flossy Hamptons, the wrong side was north of the highway. South had the oceanfront estates, the open farming vistas, the horse ranches. North was where the working people lived. North of the highway, where the land was cheaper, they put the recycling centers and the industrial parks, the skateboard rinks and the volleyball courts.
Now that most of the prime real estate to the south had been bought up and built on, the lines of privilege were not nearly as well-defined, but Paumonok Harbor still remained out of the favored loop. Not only was the Harbor north of the highway, but it was over the Long Island Rail Road tracks too. No celebrities lived here, unless you considered an aging art critic to be worthy of stargazing. The paparazzi, day-trippers, groupies and house-sharing groupers couldn’t even find the place, for which most of the inhabitants thanked heaven. Howard had been embarrassed to admit visiting such an unfashionable location.
“What did you say you were doing here?”
“Siegal”—one of the law firm’s partners—“has a place in Water Mill. He invited me out for a weekend of golf. A benefit tournament starting tomorrow. We played an early round today.”
Dante was playing in the tournament, Louisa thought. She’d heard him mention it to Mr. Bradford. Gads, what if they were in a foursome together? That was too dreadful to contemplate. “So?” she asked. “So why aren’t you back kissing up to the boss?”
Howard wasn’t insulted. He didn’t see anything wrong with trying to ingratiate himself with his employer. How else was he going to make partner? “He’s got some committee meeting at Southampton College this afternoon, so I was free. And I heard you were out here.”
“I’ve been here for over three months.”
“Yes, well, I didn’t think you’d want to see me.”
Louisa made no reply.
“Listen, do you think we could go inside? I feel silly standing out on the lawn, talking to you up on the porch.”
And his nose was getting more sunburned. Hmm. Petty vengeance aside, Louisa did not want Howard in her house. She already had that snake skin in the crawl space. “The plumber’s gone to town for parts, but he’ll be back, and the house is a mess until he does. I guess I can bring some iced tea out here.”
“Great,” he said, coming up and sitting in her rocking chair, the only seat on the porch. Champ came over from the backyard then, to sniff the newcomer. Howard did not pet him,
despite the wagging tail. “What, they don’t even have leash laws in this godforsaken place?”
“They don’t need them. Champ’s no stray, he’s my dog. I think we’ve taken care of his flea problem, but you’ll find out. That’s his chair.”
Howard was sitting on the top step when she got back with two paper cups—what, waste her good yard sale china on the slug?—of iced tea, with no ice. She took the rocker. “You still didn’t say why you came.”
He took a swallow of his drink. “I wanted to thank you.”
“For being a good little girl and not suing your ass off for breach of promise?”
He choked on the tea. Louisa thought of pounding him on the back, but she was afraid she mightn’t stop there. “Um, for that, yes, and for leaving the check and the ring.”
“I didn’t want anything of yours, including your gratitude.”
“You’re not making this easy, are you?”
“Why should I?”
He cleared his throat and shifted on the steps. “Well, you’ve got it, my thanks, that is. The little Porsche model is a beauty, and the license plates were a nice touch. You always had a great sense of humor. I brought it into the office and Siegal was so impressed that he almost wanted to fire me and hire you back.”
“I wouldn’t have gone.”
“Yes, but now he thinks better of me, because I could laugh at it, too. I wasn’t in his good graces after you started emailing your friends at the office.”
“I wonder why that was? Maybe because I told them you’d lied when you said it was a mutual decision to call off the wedding? Or because they heard you’d left me standing at the catering hall, with all the bills?”
Howard was crumpling up his paper cup. “I thought it was for the best, so you didn’t appear to be rejected.”
“Or so you didn’t appear to be a cad? I heard that two of the secretaries refuse to do your filing and none of them will fetch your coffee.”
“They’re getting over it, now that you and I are friends.”
Love, Louisa Page 22